DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.65478#0126
ornament in white plaster, with the coronet of the Duchess of Lauderdale
at the top.
One other picture was placed in Queen Catherine’s room, “Ye
Queene Mother’s Pickture in a Carv’d Guilt Frame.” This must have
been the portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria by Vandyck which is now
in the Long Gallery at Ham House, for there is no portrait of Queen
Catherine’s own mother, the astute Queen Luiza di Medina Sidonia,
widow of Juan IV. of Portugal. The marriage of Charles II. and the
Portuguese Princess was encouraged by the Duke of Lauderdale, and
according to the opinion of the time “ Lauderdale was the man to whom
the Queen of Portugal and the Infanta owe everything.”1 Yet Lauder-
dale could not have foreseen that one part of Catherine’s dowry, Bombay,
which then became the first possession of England in India, would lead
to the vast Indian Empire now under British rule.
But the memory of Catherine of Braganza is not that which makes
her chamber the most interesting of all the beautiful rooms in Ham
House. Other memories cling to the room, for it was here that the
Cabinet Council named the King’s Cabal, held its conferences, and
here it regularly met during the eight years from 1667 to 1674.
There is an old Spanish word Cabala, said to have an Eastern
origin, which means secret knowledge, and Cabal, as a name for any
secret committee, is used by Pepys, Whitelocke, Evelyn, and other
writers of the seventeenth century. But the King’s Cabal in the reign of
Charles II. has preserved the word, from the accidental circumstance
that the five letters CABAL were the initial letters of the
surnames of its five members.
C. Sir Thomas Clifford, afterwards first Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.
Born 1620; died 1674.
A. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley, afterwards first Earl of
Shaftesbury. Born 1621; died 1683.
B. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. Born 1637; died
1688.
A, Henry Bennett, first Earl of Arlington. Born 1618; died 1685.
Z. John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale. Born 1614; died 1682.
The Cabal Room at Ham House remains unchanged; everything
is now as it was in those eventful eight years during which the five
1 Miss Strickland’s Queens of England,
vol. viii., p. 272; Portland MSS., p. 125.
Quoted in Southey’s Common-Place Book.
42
at the top.
One other picture was placed in Queen Catherine’s room, “Ye
Queene Mother’s Pickture in a Carv’d Guilt Frame.” This must have
been the portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria by Vandyck which is now
in the Long Gallery at Ham House, for there is no portrait of Queen
Catherine’s own mother, the astute Queen Luiza di Medina Sidonia,
widow of Juan IV. of Portugal. The marriage of Charles II. and the
Portuguese Princess was encouraged by the Duke of Lauderdale, and
according to the opinion of the time “ Lauderdale was the man to whom
the Queen of Portugal and the Infanta owe everything.”1 Yet Lauder-
dale could not have foreseen that one part of Catherine’s dowry, Bombay,
which then became the first possession of England in India, would lead
to the vast Indian Empire now under British rule.
But the memory of Catherine of Braganza is not that which makes
her chamber the most interesting of all the beautiful rooms in Ham
House. Other memories cling to the room, for it was here that the
Cabinet Council named the King’s Cabal, held its conferences, and
here it regularly met during the eight years from 1667 to 1674.
There is an old Spanish word Cabala, said to have an Eastern
origin, which means secret knowledge, and Cabal, as a name for any
secret committee, is used by Pepys, Whitelocke, Evelyn, and other
writers of the seventeenth century. But the King’s Cabal in the reign of
Charles II. has preserved the word, from the accidental circumstance
that the five letters CABAL were the initial letters of the
surnames of its five members.
C. Sir Thomas Clifford, afterwards first Lord Clifford of Chudleigh.
Born 1620; died 1674.
A. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Ashley, afterwards first Earl of
Shaftesbury. Born 1621; died 1683.
B. George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. Born 1637; died
1688.
A, Henry Bennett, first Earl of Arlington. Born 1618; died 1685.
Z. John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale. Born 1614; died 1682.
The Cabal Room at Ham House remains unchanged; everything
is now as it was in those eventful eight years during which the five
1 Miss Strickland’s Queens of England,
vol. viii., p. 272; Portland MSS., p. 125.
Quoted in Southey’s Common-Place Book.
42